The boy woke up again after a chain of half conscious pressings of the snooze button on his electric alarm clock, caught between the bright outlook of having a free day open to do whatever he wanted and the hazy oppression that his body could not physically rouse itself into a conscious state. With the electric buzz of the alarm gone the sounds of trucks outside, a passing jet and the irregular pattern of raindrops on the roof mingled to a soothing soundtrack soon broken by the ring of the phone. For some reason everyone always calls on Fridays. The urgency of the phone is what finally gets him out of bed.

He forgets who had called as soon as he hangs up the receiver (although it must have been a friend because he remembers saying that, no he wasn’t really asleep.) and puts on some music to accompany a brief session of staring at the wall. He finds himself mostly absorbed in music or art these days. He hasn’t hung out with his friends so much, because when he’s not fiddling with his sampler and the knobs on his synthesizer or painting, he’s hanging out with his girlfriend, both of the later are always accompanied by music as well. The problem with social situations these days is that if he’s not talking about something related to art or music it becomes a challenge to make any sort of meaningful conversation.

Last week on his days off he was back to his latest methods of working, which is to put on a big pot of coffee while gathering his materials and roughly a dozen pre-prepared canvases onto the front porch. After several cups of coffee he’s into his “work mode” and can’t be bothered to slow down (except for things like flipping the cassette tape in the boombox) until 4 or 5 PM, when the coffee is long gone and the need for solid food and the fumes from spray paint lead to the oncoming headache that begins to creep into the corners of his head.

This week is a bit different though, it’s raining and cold, he’s out of sorts either from staying up too late or doing all his catching up on sleep in one night and it’s going to be difficult to get excited on a day like this, especially without any real sunlight leaving patterns on the wall through the blinds by the kitchen table. Today he’s going to work on his much neglected zine.

He’s going to sit in front of his computer and listen to his stereo while he writes and manipulates images into little boxes on the screen, write letters, draw pictures and then wonder when it got dark out and how he’s going to run all the errands he’s neglected all week.

[Eric Mast]